The Oneness Principle and 4 Other Essential Steps/Requirements to End Extreme Poverty

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International Environment Forum

The Oneness Principle and 4 Other
Essential Steps
to Eradicate Extreme Poverty

John Kendall

The first step in meaningfully addressing extreme poverty is a
conceptually-sound framing of the question. The end of extreme
poverty in our world would signal the culmination of a massive ‘projet de
societé’, a transformation of human relationships far more fundamental for
mankind’s evolution than that which could be accomplished be an optimal
outlay of policies and regulations, even if they were powered by
sufficient financial and technical resources. It would take a much broader
effort and "buy-in" across the planet than which any enlightened group of
development professionals could conjure up. To obtain the desired
response, we have to first have the proper ‘ask’. It is not a first person
singular question, but rather a second person plural one: What can ‘WE
THE PEOPLE’ (in the broadest sense) do to put ourselves on an
accelerated poverty eradication trajectory that would not be limited to
any specific geopolitical region and/or leave any significant vulnerable
group behind.

‘WE THE PEOPLE’ here does not mean just those that are fortunate enough
to not have been born into extreme poverty or forcibly dragged into it by
natural or man-made disasters. The rural and urban poor cannot be simple
objects in this process. There are tremendous untapped resources hidden in
those living well below subsistence levels. FPIC[1]
aside, the dramatic required shift cannot occur and/or be permanent
without harnessing these latent resources. On the opposite end of the
wealth scale, the comfortable middle and upper classes must also realize
that their immediate and mid-term wellbeing depends on dealing
meaningfully with the drivers of poverty that also drive extreme conflict,
as well as environmental degradation. Extreme climate change, as well as
water and air pollution and resource depletion are all part of the same
equation with extreme poverty. For those not engaged in a daily struggle
simply to survive, breaking the cycle of extreme poverty must rapidly
become as natural and as pressing a priority as ensuring that their own
children and grandchildren have what is fundamentally required to grow and
develop.

This targeted historic realignment of human priorities has to be the
‘affaire de tous’. The generality of mankind, including its key private
and public institutions, must all ‘be in the game’. This historical
paradigm shift cannot happen until a critical mass of people of all means
and backgrounds gets involved. For example, sub -Saharan Africa is home to
a large percentage of the world’s population that lives in extreme
poverty. To rapidly reverse the sad legacy of 50 plus years of failed
conventional aid in Africa (although the development community is not the
only one accountable for these failings) and foster a tidal-wave-like
drive to resiliency, there has to be an overwhelming groundswell of
concern and action worldwide from all quarters.

So how does mankind move from indifference, alienation/exclusion and
conflict to compassion, inclusive governance and reconciliation? The heart
of the answer lies with the following key premise. The foundation
for building this new, just and caring environment that facilitates the
creation of sustainable, sufficient, wealth for every one’s basic needs
is the oneness of mankind[2]: that
we share the same basic nature, needs and capacities and that we all
live on one small planet. This can be referred to as the Oneness
Principle. The inception point of the much desired drive to
resiliency for all is the moment when a critical mass of individuals in
all regions of the world (developed, developing or chronically
under-developed) accept this inherent oneness as a key part of the human
condition and a self-propelling oneness revolution is thereby spawned. This
acceptance of the Oneness Principle is the second fundamental step to
getting humanity on the ‘nexus of history’ road to resilience for all.
Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie’s song, ‘We are the World’, in response
to the 1985 Ethiopian famine, echoes well the Oneness Principle: ‘there
is a choice we’re making, we’re saving our own lives!’

For any group to achieve a major, pivotal, goal, it is important first
for them to have a good grasp of their inherent capacities, not just those
that have already been demonstrated. To reach most new goals, we have to
step outside into new territories and use latent skills never used before.
For this gigantic world endeavour, we really need to know the upper limits
of what is truly humanly possible. If, for example, a group believed that
they did not have the potential of going to the moon and back, they would
not embark on a very expensive program to build an elaborate spaceship.
One could argue that a poor, fragile, community’s journey from desperation
to resiliency and self sufficiency is an even greater challenge or step
up. It requires the attainment of a level of social cohesion and
solidarity within this poor, fragile, community that is often as hard as
making it to the moon and back. However, if the dominant belief is that
our real inner nature is fundamentally so egotistical that no real,
inner-driven, cooperation is possible, then we simply set minimalist goals
that are limited usually to conflict avoidance and not conflict resolution
and reconciliation. Such low expectations lead usually to even lower
results, as witnessed within societies that have and maintain deep,
non-reconciled, historical grievances and the related high levels of
political violence that comes with them. With this mindset, such a
community does not do what it can inherently do, and subconsciously
remains trapped within the accustomed pattern of behaviour. These
chains of fatalism that are, in large part, due to our inability to
grasp human potentialities, have to be broken for mankind to put extreme
poverty permanently in the rear view mirror. This is the third key
prerequisite/condition for mankind to embark on an
accelerated, extreme-poverty-reduction, trajectory.

To help us break out of our collective ignorance on human potentialities,
a fourth key step/prerequisite would involve a major shift in
world learning curricula and educational systems. Institutions
of higher learning around our planet need to develop a better
understanding (through sound science) of human potentialities: more
precisely, how we are actually hard-wired for compassion and have the
inherent ability to go beyond short-sighted pursuit of self interest and
actually cooperate at a high level. This reality needs to be determined
and effectively woven into world curricula.

The ability to think independently and critically would also be a key
learning outcome of new, oneness-focussed, global education systems. Truly
critical comprehensive thinking is still the exception and not the rule
and grasping the reality of the Oneness Principle requires the ability to
think clearly and independently. Social and political science, due to the
complexity of human nature and human social systems, tends to struggle to
understand and explain human social phenomena coherently. There still is a
prevailing tendency in many schools of political science to over emphasize
our adversarial nature and heavily discount evidences of cooperation. Our
value systems and world views are not as irreconcilable as they are often
portrayed in existing curricula (both western/Judeo-Christian and Islamic
militant and/or moderate schools of thought). Understanding our ability
and urgent need to cooperate does not mean that science does not continue
to try to characterize and explain our adversarial and egotistical side.
As to the concern that religious extremism presents an insurmountable
barrier to the acceptance of our oneness and the need to foster unity in
diversity, one needs to reflect on what really drives and allows these
extreme views to be propagated. Is it not the scarcity of justice,
combined with the ignorance of the Oneness Principle that allows violent
‘us against them’ views to find a sufficient number of adepts to keep the
hatred cycle alive? Darkness is not a material reality. It is an absence
of light.

This inherent human ability to cooperate must rapidly be
harnessed in a world encompassing manner. This is the fifth major
requirement. The world has already developed sophisticated
infrastructures that support high levels of economic, technological and
cultural integration across almost all geopolitical boundaries. This
social and technological infrastructure must be further enhanced to work
synergistically with the above-mentioned curricula enhancements so to
speed ground-up cooperation and assist its universal application, thereby
strengthening concerted, harmonized, efforts to accelerate the drive to
resiliency for the billion or so people that presently live well below
subsistence levels. The intensity of investment and its alignment with a
oneness-driven revolution has to measure up to the huge challenge in front
of it.

The key to getting the roadmap to complete resiliency and self
sufficiency right is to realize, at the outset, that it can only come from
a real revolution in ‘WE THE PEOPLE’ thinking, attitudes and motivation.
However enlightened the UN General Assembly and/or national governments
can become, we must understand that legislative and regulatory framework
reforms alone are not sufficient. Without these five, above-mentioned
requirements being met, it will be a rough and tumble, unsustainable,
‘business as usual’ ride. The proposed project scenario here is not a
utopia, but the baseline is.

Yogi Berra, the Yankee baseball player who had only a primary school
education, once wisely summed it up: “If you don’t know where you are
going, you probably won’t get there”. We have no choice but to travel the
route of the 5 steps described in this essay if we ever hope to eradicate
extreme poverty and everything else in that difficult equation, which
would mean nothing less than the emergence of humanity from a prolonged
period of adolescence.